Just a few days ago I gave a talk about the recent developments in the Balkans to a group of students in South Florida. At the conclusion of that talk, I challenged the audience to answer: “What is the only country on Earth that in the most recent years delivered its sitting president to a foreign court, knowing full well that the person will be found guilty”. I received no answer, even after I asked who Milosevic was. The speed with which the “unpleasantries” of the recent past are forgotten is frightening as much as it is convenient. The only working fuel for the American brain cells is money. Albanian lobby works well because it is funded well. Serbian drawbacks are too numerous to list, while the key factor is lack of funds in spite of noble efforts by J. Vujic, Serbian Unity Congress and people associated with them.

Nothing can be added or taken away from the surgical accuracy of Dr. Srdja Trifkovic’s article beginning with “When various Balkan potentates come to Washington, you can guess their ethnicity by the kind of treatment they receive. Albanian terrorists like the KLA leader Hashim Thaci do rather well. They are received at the State Department, which but a decade ago would have deemed them untouchable. They have full access to the mainstream media and publically-funded think-tanks to propagate independence for their mono-ethnic criminal fiefdom.”

Within a week or two there will be a new round of talks (in Vienna) about the status of Kosovo. I have my own views which remain rather unfavorable and loaded with distrust towards many of the participants (including the Serbians who stand to loose the most), but I will refrain from those views, giving only the summary of the true accounts that have preceded the upcoming meeting:

1. Kosovo is to Serbs what Jerusalem is to Jews.

2. Kosovo is not only the ancient birthplace of Serbian culture, religion and national pride, it is also a sacred ground where most founders of Serbian culture were buried (Stefan Prvovencani, Sveti Sava, etc.)

3. Albanian population is currently the most numerically populous ethnic group in Kosovo.

4. Albanian birth rate has been in the double digits (ranges from 11.6% to 16%) for at least 5 decades while the birth rate at the next most populous country (India) is only 1.4% - 2005 census results. While the ethnic shifts in today’s Kosovo were developing as follows: After 1918 the ethnic changes in Kosovo are the result of an enormous increase in the birth rate among Kosovo Albanians so that already in 1940 the situation was as follows: Slavic population (Serbs and Montenegrins) 34.46 percent and Non-Slavic elements: 65.54 percent. Muslim polygamy plays the major role here: a man who can afford it is entitled by the Koran to four wives ? at any one time; divorce is executed by three times pronouncing the formula "I divorce thee!". Some of the "wives" are little girls who, as one (female) observer of women's rights in Islamic societies aptly puts it, "still playing with dolls". Albanian nationalism abuses women, using them as baby machines for the expansion of Greater Albania, not only to include Old Serbia, but also Macedonia, where the Albanian percentage of the population is higher than in Old Serbia.. [Where are the feminists? Worrying about sexist pronouns, it seems.]

5. The current “war on terror” seems to be making another mistake. In the past, and through the unwise choices of the CIA (in most cases) our bedfellows were:
a). Manuel Noriega – now in a US prison;
b) Sadam Hussein – also imprisoned at present;
c) Usama bin Laden – not yet imprisoned but sure to be dead or imprisoned soon
d) President Tito of Yugoslavia (considered the culprit of the Balkan disintegration which took place in the last 15 years)
e) Fidel Castro (as unimaginable as it sounds even Fidel Castro enjoyed some US support during the early 1950s)

This type of foolish choosing has backfired on the interests of the United States many times (make that EVERY time), which is why I’d go for a more conservative approach in the present situation where we have Danish flags burned over some silly cartoons, Theo VanGogh, Dutch film-maker killed, London and Madrid public transportation systems bombed, Beslan’s Russian children killed, etc. etc. If you ask me – I’d be a little more skeptical of the “Peaceful Islam” – and not rush to give them yet another foothold on European soil.

Iliya Pavlovich